The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has officially launched the power sector recovery programme website.
The website was officially launched on Wednesday at a media workshop on power sector recovery plans held in Abuja.
The Power Sector Recovery Programme (PSRP) is a comprehensive reform programme aimed at improving power supply, restoring financial viability and enhancing accountability and transparency in the power sector.
The Chairman of NERC, Engr. Sanusi Garba while giving his welcome address recalled the power sector reform initiated by the federal government started as far back as 2005 with the creation of the EPSR Act which is the legal basis for the reform itself.
Garba said, “I want to use this opportunity to just go down memory lane. Recall the power sector reform initiated by the federal government started as far back as 2005, with the creation of a power sector reform act which is the legal basis for the reform itself.
“Eventually In 2013, there was a massive privatization that took place. Privatization of the distribution company. with the Federal Government retaining the ownership of the transmission company.
“Associated with the privatisation itself, performance agreements were signed between the bureau of public enterprises and the core investors that took over the assets.
“Particularly for DisCos, it was a little bit more complex in the sense that they had what is called lost reduction trajectory over a period of 5 years.”
He said looking at the condition of the state of the DisCos, the government came up with a policy document that clearly has a number of actions and deliverables and funding in getting the sector to recover.
“Recovering the DisCos from the state where they are, requires so much to be done and not only in terms of funding but also in terms of corporate governance and capacity building.
“The recovery programme is further complicated by the recent emerging challenges in the country. Quite a number of the distribution companies are largely affected by the security challenges in the country impacting their capacity either to deliver service or even to recover their revenue and so on.
“At the end of it all, I am happy to say that all the stakeholders involved in the power sector recovery programme are very much on track to doing what needs to be done both in terms of financial performance of the distribution companies, energy optics and so on,” he said.
The NERC chairman urged Nigerians to visit the PSRP website https://www.psrp.org.ng/customer-resources/ a platform aimed at interacting with Nigerians to get feedback on the issues of the power sector in Nigeria.